Can natural preservatives serve as a new line of protective technology against bacterial pathogens in meat and meat products?

Contamination of meats and meat products by pathogenic microorganisms is responsible for a significant percentage of outbreaks of foodborne illness. There are also concerns over the carcinogenic potential of dietary nitrate and nitrite in processed meat products. The past few decades have seen an extensive search for novel technologies alternative to synthetic chemical preservatives to reduce the level of contamination of foods by pathogenic and spoilage microbes. This review provides a general overview of natural preservatives with potential applications in the meat industry, including phages and their endolysins, bacteriocins, microbial lipopeptides, antimicrobial peptides of plant or insect origin, and essential oils or extracts of plant origins. Instead of providing summary data from the published literature, we attempt to elaborate the challenges facing the development of novel natural preservatives as antimicrobial hurdles, taking into consideration the sharp contrast between extensive studies in this particular field and very limited industrial use. More specifically, we emphasize the great importance of having streamlined approaches and methodological guidelines in the research and development of natural preservatives so that the journey to their industrial use for safer meats and meat products could be shortened or made easier.